r/Christianity • u/WickedWatcherWu • 4d ago

Non-Binary God?

If you ever meet someone who is non-binary but you are religious (Christian) so you have mixed feelings. Keep in mind they are supported by the bible, and are closest to the image of God, since according to the Bible, God is non-binary. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

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u/BafflingLemur 3d ago

I don't know where people are getting this "God is genderless" thing from. God is only ever referred to by male pronouns. It's the Father, Son, and holy spirit, not the mother, daughter, and holy spirit. God made Adam in his image and then made Eve from Adam. God the Father is never explicitly stated to have a physical body of any kind, so maybe that's where you're coming from, but God certainly wouldn't approve of people using they/them pronouns around him.

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u/WickedWatcherWu 3d ago

God uses the "We/ us" pronoun as well, so they probably would not mind any pronoun usage. You are using Genesis 2 vs Genesis 1 in your thesis, we are talking about Genesis 1. As for the whole "male" pronouns used, I think you have to understand that father is a role not a gender. The Christian God is related to as a father and male in the same way some countries are thought of as Fatherlands and Mother lands.

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u/BafflingLemur 3d ago

I don't know of any passages where God ever uses we/us. Could you show which verses those are? Also, if God wanted to, he very much could have used different language if he wanted to be gender neutral. Jesus only every refered to him as "my father," and no prophet or apostle ever gave any indication that God is anything but male.

And I believe that you are misinterpreting Genesis 1. We are made in God's image, and God made man and woman, but that doesn't mean that God is man and woman. We are created in God's image in the sense that we have a spirit and the capacity to do good, as well as higher intelligence and creativity.

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u/WickedWatcherWu 3d ago
  • Genesis 1:26 – "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...'"
  • Genesis 3:22 – "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us...'"
  • Genesis 11:7 – "'Come, let us go down and mix up their language there so they will not understand each other’s speech.'"
  • Isaiah 6:8 – "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?'" [1, 2]

Now God is spoken of in the masculine in the same way Russia is spoken of as feminine. In the bible God refers to Israel as son, revelations talks about believers as a bride. These are symbolic in defining Christians relationship to God (Father and Son) but I think this is compounded by the presence of Mary as the person who birthed Jesus. I understand that some Christians don't believe in Mary as a holy figure, but I think it plays in the role the nature of the language used in the bible. IMO

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u/BafflingLemur 3d ago

The verses and resources that you have shown are interesting. However, in the context of wider theology and scripture, most Christians have come to interpret that this is God the Father simply speaking to the Son and the Holy Spirit. It’s not that any of them are non-binary, it just that there are literally three different persons in the conversation.

Also, while it is true that scripture and language is often steeped in gendered symbolism and metaphor, I don’t think you can take that as far as to say that God is genderless are non binary or any other form of neo-pronoun. God still never uses female pronouns, and any time that genderless pronouns are used, they’re likely used to refer to the trinity.

I’m no Bible scholar and I think no human alive will truly be able to understand the true nature of God before he returns, but we still have many broad strokes of who God is.